Quotes About Stillness

When you sit, keep your spinal column quite straight, while allowing your body to be relaxed. When your sitting posture is relaxed and stable, you can sit comfortably for a long time.

Don't make a great effort, or struggle, or fight as you sit. Let go of everything. This prevents backache, shoulder-ache, or headache. If you are able to find a cushion that fits your body well, you can sit for a long time without feeling tired.

Cultivating a strong training in meditation and mindfulness is not an opiate to escape what's going on but a way for us to truly still the mind and look deeply, in order to see ourselves and the world clearly.

If you sit regularly, it will become a habit. You will let go of trying to arrive anywhere. Even the Buddha still practiced sitting every day after his enlightenment. There is nowhere to arrive except the present moment.

The kind of sitting we're used to doing is sitting in order to work at our computers, to be in meetings, or to space out in front of a screen. So we have to practice sitting just to be with ourselves without distractions.

When we're sitting, we're truly there in the present moment; we have come home, we have arrived. We are present in that time and place; we're not pulled away by the past, the future, or by anger or jealousy in the present.

Your breathing is a stable, solid ground where you can take refuge. No matter what thoughts, emotions, and perceptions are going on inside you, your breath is always there, like a faithful friend.

Nonaction is, in fact, also action.

Advierte que el silencio viene de tu corazón y no de estar callado.

Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts.

Her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper could always be softened by stroking them down. When her hair was brushed she would instantly sink into stillness and look like the Sphinx. If, in passing under one of the Edgon banks, any of its thick skeins were caught, as they sometimes were, by a prickly tuft of the large Ulex Europaeus--which will act as a sort of hairbrush--she would go back a few steps, and pass against it a second time.

The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this.

There was no wind, in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing from the fir-trees showed that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation.

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding.

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.

All that silence and absence of goings-on is the stillness of infinite motion.

His empty hands hanging palms forward at his sides, he stood at the window looking to the empty east. He did not look for dawn; east was only the way the window faced.

When I couldn't speak I was not drawn into silence, silence captured me.

Z opuszczonymi rÄ™kami staÅ' w oknie, patrzÄ…c w puste niebo. Nie czekaÅ' na wschód sÅ'oÅ"ca. Wschód to byÅ' tylko kierunek, na który wychodziÅ'o okno.

That when a thing lies still, unlesse somewhat els stirre it, it will lye still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat els stay it, though the reason be the same, (namely, that nothing can change it self,) is not so easily assented to.

boredom is the coldest thing in the world.

Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest at night.

Some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual... And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform.